My Week with Sesame Music – Tuesday

Classical Smackdown
Tuesday, April 23

First up, a confession: I’m an Elmovangelist. I’m a realist — I mean, I can see why other Muppet fans are annoyed by him, but the thing is, I’m not, and I’ll defend him to my dying breath. (And as Elmo himself points out, oh-so-adorably, in Take a Breath, “If you stop your breathing you’ve got big big trouble!”) So I’ve been openly looking forward to today’s album, Elmo and the Orchestra.

Elmo and the Orchestra is a really neat idea. Elmo and Big Bird introduce their audience of eager three year olds to the world of classical music, and they do it via a cute little radio-play.

The plot, such as it is, has Elmo come across an all-bird orchestra tuning up near Big Bird’s nest. Elmo recalls that he heard a symphony once, but he can’t remember how it goes. So the orchestra plays a whole bunch of pieces to jog his memory. And along the way, we all learn about woodwinds and percussion and string and brass, and we get to hear all the really catchy parts from classical stand-bys like Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, Strauss’ The Blue Danube Waltz, Offenbach’s Can Can from Orpheus in the Underworld, and, of course, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

The fun part, though, is that the script by Sarah Albee is absolutely packed to the rafters with really labored, so bad they’re nearly good, Sesame Street-style puns. Cool! Classical music and puns, together at last. The orchestra is called the Birdapest Symphony Orchestra, and the conductor, played by Jerry Nelson, is called Leonard Birdseed. His lead violinist and piano soloist, both played by Fran Brill, are named Penelope Pinfeathers and Signora Barbara F. Seville, respectively.

Sample dialogue:

Elmo’s reply to Penelope suggesting “a bit of Paganini”: “Sure! Elmo had some fettucine once and it was delicious!”

During The Swan from The Carnival of Animals, Elmo thinks the swan sounds sad: “Maybe it’s thinking about its difficult childhood as an ugly duckling!”

It’s cute and funny and, yes, it’s educational — I actually didn’t know that the piano was a percussion instrument until Elmo and Big Bird found out for me — so it seems churlish to fault it, but this is Tough Pigs, so I’m going to fault it anyway.

First, for all my childish pleasure in a bad pun, there’s a difference between bad jokes and just plain bad writing. During The Ride of the Valkyries, Big Bird and Elmo exchange the following dialogue at the top of their lungs:

Elmo: This sure is loud!

Big Bird: What’s that? You’re proud?

Elmo: No no no, Big Bird, Elmo said, this is loud!

Okay, we get the idea. But there’s more.

Big Bird: Of course it’s allowed! Orchestras get to do that, silly!

Elmo: No! Elmo’s trying to say it’s definitely not a quiet piece!

Fine. Good. Neat. But we’re done, right? Oh… No. No, we’re not.

Big Bird: Try a piece? Try a piece of what?

Elmo: Elmo’s just saying that the music has a very loud sound!

Big Bird: What? You found it?

A similar, but even more painful, exchange takes place at the end, when the pizza man ringing the doorbell finally jogs Elmo’s memory:

“That’s the piece, Big Bird!” — “The piece of pizza?” — “No, no, the piece of music!” — “Pizza music? Never heard of it! How does it go?” — “Elmo’s talking about the music piece!” — “Music pizza? What kind of topping does that have?”

You’d think that would be the end of it, but Elmo goes to great lengths to explain it as clearly as possible to Big Bird, telling him very simply what we’ve figured out by now: “Big Bird, the pizza delivery man just reminded Elmo of the symphony Elmo’s trying to remember!” But Big Bird still doesn’t get it: “I don’t see how that could be, Elmo. I’m quite sure there’s a birdseed pizza inside that box he’s carrying, not a piece of music!”

I’ve never come so close to stealing Big Bird’s teddy bear and smacking him over the beak with it. Surely by now there are two year olds rolling their eyes and thinking Big Bird should be put into some kind of special class where clowns squirt him with a seltzer bottle every time he tries a dumb pun routine like that again.

The simple story is a great way to introduce a lot of different pieces, and to introduce a lot of ideas, but it’s not such a great hook for repeated listens. (Enterprising youngsters and interested fans will note that the thrill of wondering what symphony Elmo’s after can be neatly ruined by looking at the name of the last track on the back cover.) With just one basic plot element — essentially, “What’s the name of that song?” — and no subplots or characterization to speak of, once you’ve heard it a couple of times, the only thing the album’s got going for it is the music. Trouble is, you can’t just listen to the music — the characters are talking before, after and even during most of the tracks, so even the skip button’s no use here. It is fun to listen to, but basically, Elmo and the Orchestra amounts to a sampler CD. It’s fine to hear once or twice, and who knows, it might inspire the next Yo-Yo Ma —

Big Bird: What? What about yo’ mama?

— but it’s never going to be disc number one in any preschooler’s 8-stack CD player.

Next: More Elmo Trouble.

by Kynan Barker